Iranian Journal of Sociology
Year:2010 | Volume:11 | Issue:3|Papers Count:8

The aim of this paper is to describe the Muslim Countries differences in fertility transition during 1980-2005, and to study the role of family planning and national development programs on world fertility trends and convergences. This is a secondary analysis research. The statistical population includes 33 Muslim countries, a term referring to countries in which Muslims constitute at least 50 percent of the total population. The data is mostly taken from UNDP and United Nations Population Division for 2007 and 2008.The results show that Muslim countries experienced different fertility levels as compared with that of the world during 1980-2005. Moreover, Muslim countries varied remarkably in terms of timing of fertility transition, the pace of fertility reduction during the fertility transition period, attainment of replacement-level fertility, and continuing fertility decline. According to this study, fertility convergence in Muslim countries is a new phenomenon that appeared at the threshold of The 21st century. The results show that this phenomenon has been caused by the improvement in Human Development Index (HDI) and the spread of contraception in Muslim countries. Then, it is expected that more improvements in HDI and CPR lead to more convergence with global fertility levels and trends.

One of the important issues in the field of political sociology concerning the genesis and alteration of political attitudes has been the type of political attitudes and the sociological analysis of their source and effective factors. The present article aims to investigate the social distribution of modern and traditional political attitudes in The city of Yazd.The results showed that the rate of political modernism among the young and single is higher than the old and married people, respectively. Moreover there was a direct relation between education socio-economic status, political knowledge, political participation, use of the mass media and political modernization. Use of the mass media, political knowledge, political participation and religiosity were statistically significant in their effectiveness on political attitudes among the research variables, Furthermore, through variance of the linear combination of the independent variable 20.6% of the variance in political attitude was accounted for.

As far as the quantitative amount of publications is concerned, the social science in Iran is accused of negligence and that it is not in line with the rapid rate of production and publication in science. The main issue of the present essay is to determine the extent of truthfulness of this accusation concerning the social science production status in Iran, given the impartial and Objective data.Taking the literature of sociology of science, the act of publication, on the one hand enriches different capital reserves, and it is, on the other hand, an instrument for competitive struggle and for demonstrating scientific competence in the world of science. This process is a part of awarding system in the scientific community. Among scientists, it is also a medium for scientific interaction, representing norms for the socially inclined scientists.Most importantly, quantity and quality of scientific publications show the development of science in every branch or field of human sciences. Since science is metaphorically a live organism, and that 'life of science' is in many ways similar to that of the natural life, the theory of 'ecology of science' can offer potent concepts and metaphors for researchers in order to describe and develop science.Utilizing this approach and by use of the method known as 'scientometrics' this paper seeks to recognize evolutionary points in production of science in the field of social sciences in the decade of 2000-2010.The findings of this study show the main model of production of science in the field of social sciences in Iran has been that of 'book production' In the last decade, 80 per cent of science production belongs to human sciences, and 14.9 percent to social sciences. Regarding the amount of science production, social sciences take the third place after the fields of literature and religion. It indicates the 'principle of diversity' in ecology of science that means the production process and ecology of social sciences is based on the pattern of books not the ISI articles. This pattern is however, different in some fields such as chemistry. The results show that in the decade under study, the quantitative development of social sciences production accompanies the quantitative development of other sciences. It demonstrates the 'co-evolutionary' phenomenon in ecology of science.As to the other findings, they show that the current situation and the evolutionary trend of this decade, when variables such as translation or authorship, originating in Tehran or other cities, being male or female, first print or reprint and other quantitative indexes of publication like circulation, pages, and the like are considered in the social science texts,.

The present research examines the exertion of influence by independent variables of social capital, cultural capital, parents' socio-economic status, and district of residence; and also influence exerted by background variables of age and gender on dependent variable of advanced social personality amongst the youth in the city of Babol. This is a survey-method research which uses the questionnaire as data gathering technique. The statistical population consists of all youths between 18 to 30 years of age who resided in Babol city at the time the research was conducted. The sample volume is 264 (139 females, and 125 males). The findings show that the independent variable of cultural capital and background variables of age and district of residence had significant relationship with the index of advanced social personality at 0.493. These variables explain the variance of advanced social personality at 0.234.

During the past century, there has been a growing demand for democracy among the public of many countries. But mass demand does not automatically bring a transition to democratic rule; in addition such transition presents democracy's advocates with difficult challenges. Iran is one of the countries in which demand for democracy has been growing and is now widespread. Nevertheless, despite great efforts made by many members of the public, Iran has not made a successful transition to democracy.This paper examines political culture of ethnic groups of Kurds (in Iran and Iraq) and Fars (Iran) and also impact of ethnic factor on the typology of their political culture. We will examine such political culture in the framework of the global measures of political culture as developed by Inglehart and Welzel (2005, 2009). Analyzing a survey of the adult population of the Kurd and Fars ethnic groups, we find relatively similar strong emphasis on emancipative value between Iranian groups of Kurds and Fars, and also strong and meaningful deference between the Iranian and the Iraqi Kurds. We did not find Significant relationships between ethnicity and democratic political culture or emancipative value.

The concept of the Iranian pre-capitalist city, and that of its political economy, has been defined in different manners. It has been conceptualized as absent landlords settlement (soviet Marxist approach) or as place of governmental bureaucracy for land resource management (Asiatic Marxist approach). There is a third approach (Weberian approach) that defines the Iranian pre-capitalist city as the birth place of Iran's traditional bourgeoisie. But in the Iranian history rational and legal norms of Iranian traditional bourgeoisie have not been institutionalized because of despotic government intervention. In soviet and Asiatic approaches, pre-capitalist city lacks specific economic logic and it is subordinated to the rural economy. In the weberian approach, the medieval Western city as an 'ideal type' is central in defining the Iranian pre-capitalist city. These approaches are fallacious in terms of their theoretical and epistemological stance which make their approach fall short of explaining Iran's pre-capitalist city specificities. This article claims that we can conceptualized a specific logic for Iranian pre-capitalist city by a new model based on structural Marxism which we have modified it as the Articulation of Modes of Production and Simple Commodity Production.